Response 12: Predictions for 2012 Election Success

The 2012 elections are still more than 2 years off–who knows exactly what technology will look like then, what new tools will be taking everyone by storm? In 2006, Twitter was a side project. By the 2008 elections, “Senator Obama — or one of his staff members — typed more than 250 updates to his Twitter account…” I don’t pretend to know enough about the very cutting edge of social media to predict what specific tool will provide a candidate the edge in 2012 (I hope it’s not one of these totally creepy augmented reality tools, though, because the idea of a candidate’s fieldworker pulling out their iphone, identifying my face, and pulling up my social networking profiles to find out more about me freaks me the hell out.) That said, I think there are a couple of obvious lessons from the reading that candidates will do well to have learned before campaign season:

1. Start early, and fix bugs as you go.
A direct quote from the Infonomics article: “Campaign insiders believe this seemingly-endless season was one of the best things that happened to the [Obama] campaign; it allowed them to build grassroots networks across the country, sign up volunteers, and test out field operations in every state long before the November general election, thus allowing them to refine tools, data collection, and reporting.” The Edelman document mentions “starting early” as a lesson to be learned from the campaign. Various online sources hold this lesson dear–the Betfair Blog started talking 2012 in November, 2008. And there’s already a mobile app counting down to the big day. The earlier a candidate starts, the longer they have to develop tools, create networks of support, and fix problems.

2. Enable user-generated content.
The Edelman Trust Barometer makes it clear–people trust other people like themselves (and these days, apparently, academic experts. Don’t think that’s relevant to campaigns, though.) So a candidate has to make it possible for his or her supporters to communicate with one another online, in both conventional ways (forums, groups, emails) and Web 2.0 ways (posting youtube videos, creating promotional materials for the candidate and having a means for widespread distribution.) Obama did this well, and the successful 2012 candidate can build on his campaign’s model.

3. Focus on mobile.
I’m convinced this is a big deal for pretty much everything online, campaigns included. The figure from the Edelman document really drives it home: 90% of Americans are within 3 feet of their cell phones 24 hours a day. Mobile content lends itself to the “real-world” interactivity that a candidate needs to convert online enthusiasm into. Since cell phones can do more and more (there’s not much a top-end smartphone CAN’T do), it makes sense to develop mobile apps, use SMS, and invest time in sites that cater to mobile users (Twitter comes to mind.)

Classmate Blog Response – Reality TV FTW

Last week, Jania wrote what I thought was a bit of a strange post about Reality TV. While I agree that resisting the lure of certain shows is difficult (as Jania put it, “Some reality programming is really bad, yet once you’ve watched one episode it’s sometimes difficult not to continue the torture.”), I have a tough time with the notion of separating the genre into good/bad categories.

Let’s be honest: artful, intelligent reality television (or film) is generally called something else–a documentary. Creating a high art/low art distinction between watching Bad Girls Club and the God-loving Duggars out in Arkansas (Officially: 18 Kids and Counting, though Mama Duggar is once again with child) seems difficult to defend. None of these shows can argue for the strength of their writing (as they claim not to be written, something Rock of Love makes a compelling case for), their cinematography, or the quality of their acting (See: every reality show star who has said something to the effect of ”It’s all real. Really real.”) I can’t imagine what basis there is for judging the value of a particular reality tv program beyond personal preference.

So would I call it all bad? Not exactly. I don’t think reality TV is artful, and I don’t think it’s intelligent–but I do think it’s entertaining. It’s like the (ongoing) cultural discussion about pop music: does it matter if it’s “good” if it’s catchy? Can we really call something “bad” if we enjoy it? What’s the role of the guilty pleasure in all this? Or (my least favorite thing ever, as least as it’s currently understood) irony? Personally, I don’t feel at all guilty watching the Real Housewives’ epic meltdown while listening to “My Humps” without the least bit of ironic detachment. I, my friends, am a 21^st century Epicurean.

Pour Vous:

The ONE Time I Try to Tweet

This happens:

Response 11: L is for Lindsay, Latvia

The “L” countries of the world don’t have much going on. I chose Latvia, but upon looking at the GlobalVoices listing, I saw that the most recent post is from September 17th, 2009. Having become accustomed to my google reader–in which hardly a minute goes by without someone posting something–this struck me as an absurdly long time for no one to post. In fact, thmost prolific blogger who comes up for Latvia, a woman by the name of Veronica Khokhlova, is actually the Regional Editor for Central and Eastern Europe, not a specifically Latvian blogger.

I found a few others using the googles: a personal blog written by an American ex-pat in Latvia, a blog that seems political but that I can’t really figure out, and a photo blog maintained by a fashion photographer living in Latvia. These seem similar to what we’re used to seeing (a smattering of the personal, the political, and the commercial), but in much, much smaller numbers. There is also a listing by country (similar to GlobalVoices) at blogcatalog.com. As far as I can tell, the sites there are similar to the sampling I found on my own, using Google.

One thing that occurred to me: Does Latvia not have celebrities? The one blog type I couldn’t seem to find was a celebrity news/gossip site–and everyone knows those are the shining gems of the (American) internet. According to this article, there are at least 10 celebs–including the “face of the Maxima supermarket chain”–doesn’t anyone in Latvia want to know who he’s sleeping with?

Nevermind.

Witnessing War: Trauma Literature and Warblogs

I’ve spent a few hours reading some of the warblogs/blogs from Iraq, and I’ve found myself repeatedly reminded of two classes I took as an undergrad. The first was a class on African-American Literature, the first quarter of which featured numerous slave narratives. One of the defining characteristics of early African-American writing was the prominence of autobiography. There wasn’t much African-American fiction happening prior to the late 19th century; most writing was autobiographical, documenting the life of the author–and most authors of this period began their lives as slaves. There is thus an African-American literary history of bearing witness to brutality, of putting it into language and claiming the experience. (For a more thorough and nuanced look at slave narratives, this article is well-worth the time.)

The second class focused on Holocaust Literature (I guess I went for the bummer lit classes). There is an entire genre of holocaust survivor testimony, many of which bear a striking resemblance to the aforementioned slave narratives. The author recounts his or her early life, spends the bulk of the memoir detailing the trauma of the war, the camps, or exile, then concludes with escape/freedom. This is not to downplay the unique personal tragedy of each story, of course, but to describe a larger theme.

Humans can’t seem to help writing about trauma. There is, in fact, an entire school of literary theory devoted to “trauma theory” (it gets 99,000 resuts on google.) The warblogs–in particlar Salam Pax and Baghdad Burning–seem to me to represent the newest incarnation of a very old type of writing. Entries like this one,  and this cross the line from citizen-journalism into something else–a sort of citizen-witnessing (here’s an interesting take on what it means to “bear witness,” though I don’t entirely agree with the political ideology of the text or its author) that has less to do with journalism and more to do with grief, mourning, and remembrance.

Google News, Thanks for the Laughs

Check out the image illustrating the HIV headline. Relevance? Anyone?

Response 10: What We Talk About When We Talk About Wikipedia

The theme I hear most when Wikipedia is explained is that “anyone can edit it.” The official introduction page drives this point home with its assertion that “anyone can edit almost any page, and we encourage you to be bold!” That’s a nice sentiment, but I don’t know how accurate it really is. Aside from the obvious restrictions–an editorial structure that favors administrators, locked pages, etc–editing Wikipedia for myself has driven home another point: This shit takes a lot of time.

 If you’re trying to do a good job with your edits–which I obviously was–it’s just like writing a “real” encylopedia (or research paper): hard. It meant quite a bit of time hunting for primary sources, fact-checking the prior contents of the page, and editing my original material to be coherent. I was “lucky” in that there wasn’t any debate over my contributions (I am not sure there is another Emerson student/grad who cares enough about the college’s Wikipedia entry to argue with me; such is the nature of Emerson students/grads). I can only imagine how exhausting it would be to invest hours of time only to have your efforts erased. Jonathan Berr on dailyfinance.com notes this issue in a recent post: “Apparently, the stress involved in maintaining this endeavor is enormous. ‘Many people are getting burnt out when they have to debate about the contents of certain articles again and again,’ Spanish researcher Felipe Ortega told the Journal. A spokesman for the Wikipedia Foundation could not be reached for comment. Moreover, given the state of the economy, many can no longer afford to pursue time-consuming hobbies such as editing Wikipedia articles.”

Berr’s post references this article from the Wall St. Journal (the same story is basically covered via the Times UK, here). It seems Wikipedia is having a tough time holding on to volunteers, and I can see why–who has both the time and inclination to dive into pages of arcane rules, learn the formatting style, and hunt for citations just to improve the world’s understanding of Emerson College (or lemurs, or Saved By The Bell, or anything else)? Maybe when the project was new and exciting, people could rationalize it. But now–IN THIS ECONOMY!!11!–it strikes me as collossally unlikely that more volunteers will magically appear. I doubt I’ll be back for more. (Other than to fix typos. I am not the kind of person who can leave a typo uncorrected.)

Note: I did not write that review of Emerson. I actually loved Emerson. But that review is dear to me and my “overcompensatingly feminist” heart.

Twitter, Wave Leave Me Unimpressed

Amanda wrote an interesting post back on November 5th about her personal experience with Twitter. Her thoughts are familiar to me: “…I wondered, “who cares?” Who really needs to know what you ate for lunch, who you spoke to on the phone, or who upset you today?” My thoughts exactly.

In short: “Twitter is stupid.” But hey, I signed up for this class, and on September 30th I (quietly, with an air of resignation) signed up for Twitter, as well. This is my page. Obviously, I am not one of the site’s more prolific users. Try as I might, I just don’t connect with the format. (Although this feature, a regular on jezebel.com, is very funny.) I like in-depth blog posts, with strong writing and lots of links. I don’t mind a page worth of text. Twitter is a big deal, but I just don’t get it.

This has been a recurring problem recently. When I tried Secondlife, I hated it. When I tried Twitter, I didn’t see the point. This week, my friend Mike (not the nerdiest guy I know, but the nerdiest one I’m good friends with) hooked me up with a Google Wave invite. I’ve been using it for five days now, and granted, there are a few issues: the bugginess, the lack of *other* people I know who are using wave, the fact that I haven’t had enough time to try to do everything that Wave can do. So, keeping those points in mind, my verdict?

Eh.

Best I can tell, Wave is an email-chat-filesharing service. And that’s neat, I guess, but I don’t see the immediate application. There are plenty of posts around the internet about what wave does–but I still find myself wondering why we needed wave to do these things in the first place. Anyone have any ideas?

Response 9: Wikipedia, or: Wait, Who Were the Five New Kids on the Block?

I haven’t cracked a print encyclopedia for years—probably not since early in high school—so debating the merits of Wikipedia versus, say, Brittanica, seems like an irrelevant question.  It’s been my policy to consult multiple books and peer-reviewed journal articles when writing academic papers, or checking information for work (I edit legal/academic writing). That’s not to say I don’t use Wikipedia—I use it whenever a random question that can be answered using the sort of general information Wikipedia provides pops into my head.  How old is Courtney Love? How many people survived the fire at the Branch Davidian complex outside Waco?  What exactly is a sunchoke? I’ve consulted Wikipedia for the answers to all of these questions within the last week.

Hypothetically, I see both sides of the argument. Experts review the material in traditional encyclopedias, and it’s highly unlikely that someone with an axe to grind is going to incorrectly claim, in print, that a living politician died, or that “the Jesuits supported the Shimabara Rebellion in 17th-century Japan.” That said, most reports have found that Wikipedia and Brittanica have a similar number of errors (whether or not they have similar types of errors is a different question), and that errors on Wikipedia get corrected very quickly. There’s always a risk of incorrectly reported information—all it takes is a review of first-on-the-scene reporting to confirm that there’s often plenty of misinformation in “traditional” information sources.

The question is one of what purpose Wikipedia intends to serve (check out the quote from Jimmy Wales). As an academic source to be cited in a thesis? I don’t trust it. In order for me to trust it, I would want to know exactly who was responsible for every change to the page, and I would want those changes peer-reviewed by a recognized expert before going live. In other words, I would trust it if it was a peer-reviewed journal. But I also don’t want it to serve that purpose any more than I want to drive a washing machine. For the information I need, I’ll take the constantly-updated, unlimited-wordcount, generally trustworthy content on Wikipedia over a year-old entry in the Brittanica any day.

Response 8: BostonNOW, Epic Crowdsource Fail.

“Wow,” the founders of BostonNOW thought to themselves, “Blogs sure are neat.  Wouldn’t it be great if we could put an open call out to bloggers, hire a skeleton staff of quasi-professional journalists, and create a print paper made primarily out of web content?” And that’s just what they did, back in April, 2007, while I was still living in Boston. The thing was, it wasn’t great. It was actually pretty terrible.

For one, there is generally a huge discrepancy in writing styles that people are willing to tolerate on the web and in the paper. BostonNOW made the error of assuming that just because people will read something online (ahem), they also want it in their newspaper—and that’s frankly just not true.  Most bloggers (like most people) aren’t fantastic writers (check out these reviews), and god knows BostonNow failed to realize that when they opened up their paper to the whole wide world.

Consumers demand a certain level of professionalism from their newspapers—even free ones, particularly in a market that already offered another free daily and two respected free alt-weeklies (Boston Phoenix, Weekly Dig).  When you decide to crowdsource, though, there’s a big chance that the people participating are not exactly professionals. And readers lose confidence after the millionth typo and mistakes of this magnitude. (Um, actually, BostonNow…)

The paper folded in April, 2008, almost exactly a year after printing began. It wished itself a fond farewell, but others seem to remember things a bit differently. I, for one, thank Iceland for their kind service to print journalism.